A mining expert puts 30,000,000 tons of ore in sight on two groups of claims. It is by a wide margin the largest claim in the collection.
Headed Mines Near Jasper and subtitled Large Quantities of Low Grade Gold Ores Exposed, datelined Jasper, 10 June. This is the clipping that dominates the ledger, and it needs reading carefully.
Mr. William Farrish, one of the best known mining experts of the West, estimated that on two groups of the Jasper Gold Mining, Milling and Transportation company's claims, there are 30,000,000 tons of ore in sight. The paper adds that these great bodies of ore average between $9 and $13 per ton, that delivery to a mill would cost about 35 cents a ton, and that treating would cost not over $3 a ton.
Multiply the low end of that range by the tonnage and the claim is $270 million of gold in the ground, which at the statutory $20.67 an ounce is about 13.1 million troy ounces. The upper end of the paper's own range gives 18.9 million. For scale, that is several times the gold Colorado has produced in its entire recorded history, from one camp, in one paragraph, in one newspaper.
It is entered in the ledger at the conservative end of the range because it was printed and the ledger records what was printed. It is an estimate of ore standing in the ground, not of gold recovered, and nothing in this collection suggests any part of it was ever taken out. The company was at that moment putting up a Bailey mill of twenty five tons daily capacity, which the article calls simply for a test.
The same column is frank about the grade. The ore is low grade, too low to be profitably shipped, but lying in enormous bodies which are easily gotten at, and the cost of shipping to the railway ran $15 to $20 a ton, so only the very high grade could move at a profit and the rest went over the dump.
The scan is in two parts. The image here is the top of the column and the continuation is linked below.